An Internet browser and tools suite designed and touted as enhancing safe surfing for children has been released by Children's Educational Network, with Colorado-based USA Teleservices contracted to promote the package.
The company said the Smart Zone Kids browser is created specifically to protect children and teens from online pedophiles and "inappropriate" content, and allows parents to customize the browser to their preferences.
Smart Zone Kids' applications include child-safe browsers and talking email and chat, with CEN and USA Teleservices planning to bring forth a talking instant messaging program to go with the suit in the near future.
These programs involve talking animated characters helping guide and protect children while on the Web, personal information filters to stop kids from sending personal sensitive information to chat rooms, profane language blockers, and parental e-mail notifications anytime a child tries to visit a Web site the parent would consider questionable, USA Teleservices said.
Parents can edit an "include list" that lets children access only Websites the parents determine to be safe for them to visit, the company said announcing the December 10 release. Parents can also use what the company calls a desktop lockdown feature, letting children surf with closed community browsers—a major difference, the company said, from other parental controls that merely allow kids to minimize browsers and still leave them vulnerable to "an unguarded Internet."
CEN said various surveys show that about one out of four kids have seen unwanted sexual material online while one out of five have been approached or solicited online, according to Dateline NBC. CEN also said their studies indicate thirty percent of all unsolicited e-mail they have been asked to review includes porn, often appearing as harmless promotions to trick children.
SmartZoneKids is more than just a safe-Web browser suite, however. CEN said parents can turn it into a kind of second nanny for their children, programming its animated characters to remind them of chores and other parental wishes and beliefs and compiling lists of child-appropriate sites to help them do their homework.
But kids can also learn a little real-world sense with the package, too, CEN said. Playing games in the SmartZoneKids Educational Arcade includes rewarding children with "Fuzzy Money" in an online bank account, teaching them a kind of banking and rewarding them with virtual paychecks for playing educational games.
